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Pressed Chicken

A dish of stewed chicken pressed into a loaf after simmering and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicken and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,958 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Pressed Chicken

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicken

  1. Clean the chickens.

  2. Cut up the chickens.

  3. Stew them in enough water to cover.

  4. When nearly cooked, season with salt and pepper.

  5. Let them stew until the water is mostly boiled out and the meat falls from the bones.

Shred and skim

  1. Remove the bones and gristle.

  2. Chop the meat coarsely.

  3. Return the meat to the stew pot with the remaining broth.

  4. Skim off the fat.

  5. Heat through again.

Press and set

  1. Pour into a square bread pan.

  2. Place a platter on top.

  3. Weigh it down.

  4. Let it cool until set.

  5. Slice.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Chicken + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,958 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Chickens
Provide the meat that is cooked, shredded and pressed into the set loaf.
Water
Cooks the chicken slowly and forms the broth that the finished dish is set in.

The step that matters

Let them stew until the water is mostly boiled out and the meat falls from the bones.. Long, gentle simmering breaks down collagen in the connective tissue, making the meat tender and releasing gelatin that helps the pressed mass hold together when cooled.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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